Short Term Lets Licensing Statistics Scotland to 30 June 2025

Licences in operation: local areas

Table 3 shows that local authorities with the highest numbers of total licences (provisional or granted) and exemptions in operation as of 30 June 2025 include Highland, Edinburgh, Argyll & Bute, and Fife which accounted for 54% (17,075) of all such licences.

All Temporary Exceptions (284) and most Temporary Licences (155 out of 169) were in Edinburgh. These are primarily for Short Term Lets for the Edinburgh Festival.

However, there may be applications eligible for a provisional licence where the application was not validated by 30 June 2025 and therefore not reported in this publication.

Table 3: Total licences (granted or provisional) in operation as of 30 June 2025 by local authority

Local Authorities can set out additional conditions to short term let properties when granting a licence. 18% (5,621) of the 31,183 granted licences were with additional conditions. Na h-Eileanan Siar (1,071) and Argyll & Bute (2,593) accounted for most of these licences.  The additional conditions for Na h-Eileanan Siar and Argyll & Bute can be found on the local authority website guidance pages. Examples include prevention of nuisance and disturbance conditions. Please refer to Table 9 in the supporting excel file for more information.

Map 2: Licences in operation per 10,000 dwellings, as of June 2025

Map 2 shows the number of active licences and exemptions (including provisional licences). The distribution is roughly similar to the number of applications, with rural locations popular with tourists having the highest rates.

Table 12 in the supporting documents Excel workbook lists the number of licences in operation by individual data zone area. A total of 3,501 data zones have had at least one licence or exemption in operation of 30 June 2025, which equates to 52% of the total 6,796 data zones in Scotland.